The invention relates to a surgical obturator for piercing a body wall with a tubular housing, with a blade carrier displaceable in the tubular housing in the longitudinal direction between an advanced cutting position and a retracted protected position, a blade with a cutting edge being held on the blade carrier, the cutting edge being guided in a correspondingly extending guide of the tubular housing, with a protective cap engaging over the blade and being displaceable in the tubular housing in the longitudinal direction between an advanced rest position in which the blade is completely covered in its protected position and a retracted work position, the protective cap having a slit through which the cutting edge of the blade passes and, in the work position of the protective cap, projects over the latter, and with a retracting device arranged in the tubular housing and displacing the blade from the cutting position to the protected position, the retracting device being activatable by displacement of the protective cap from the work position to the rest position.
Such a surgical obturator is described in German utility model 20 2006 008 405 U1. Herein the retracting device is arranged in the grip area of the obturator where quite a lot of space is available for complex mechanics of the retracting device.
Such retracting devices are also known from other known surgical obturators. These ensure that the blade or a trocar tip is automatically retracted when the body wall is fully pierced. In all cases, the constructions of the retracting devices are complicated. These retracting devices have a lot of parts and a large space requirement and, therefore, in all cases, they must be arranged in an area remote from the blade or the trocar tip, in some cases, in the grip of the obturator (EP 0 499 457 B1; EP 0 705 077 B1; EP 0 600 921 B1) or in an unwieldy special construction (U.S. Pat. No. 5,462,532 A).
The object of the invention is to so construct a generic surgical obturator that the retracting device is of less complicated construction and has a lower space requirement than known retracting devices.